Dear Pink24:

“The current state? Well, I haven’t spoken to my siblings since 2012–except for a few sporadic times… As for my parents, since 2012, I’ve gradually lessened contact, spoken sporadically. I spoke to my mother in January” – you are still in contact with your siblings and with your mother, less contact, sporadic contact, but still contact.

Back in 2018, you asked: “how to protect myself. Do I never go home again?” – my answer: yes, never go home again.

When you go back to your abusive mother (and abusive sibling) for more abuse, it doesn’t matter if you do it daily or sporadically. The child within you, the core and beginning of who you are, knows that you will take her again to her abusive mother (in-person or on the phone), so she remains hurt and angry because… there will be a next time, a next visit.

Your child-within needs to know that you are taking her emotional safety and emotional well-being seriously, that you are taking the abuse she suffered seriously and therefore, that you will never again place her in contact with her abusers.

Imagine being the mother of a little girl who has been abused by your mother (her grandmother). Your daughter does not want to see the face of your mother, nor to hear her voice. You say to her: we are going to visit grandma, she says: No, I don’t want to! And you say: it will be for just a little while, it’s only once a month, etc., and I’ll be there with you to protect you. She says: but it still hurts me when we’re there, her voice, her face, her touch, all remind me of bad things.

“Since 2012, I’ve built a new life for myself from scratch. But I still have this lingering pain–like right in my heart–and I feel like it’ll be with me forever. Like some part of me will always feel rejected, and unworthy of love” – you built your new life with the old abuse still in it, sporadically, from time to time. As a result, the pain lingers, the feelings of rejection and being unworthy of love… these linger. They are maintained by the maintained contact with abuse.

“–even though intellectually I know…” – you know what you know intellectually, as an adult, but the only knowledge that matters when it comes to emotional health, is the emotional knowledge that we acquired in childhood.

“I know that my mother and older sister suffer from some kind of undiagnosed mental illness” – this is intellectual knowledge acquired in adulthood, which has no bearing on the emotional knowledge acquired in childhood.

“Which my other sibling refuses to see” – if they saw the diagnoses you are referring to, it will not change their emotional knowledge either, for the same reason. About refusing to see, what is it that you are refusing to see? Is it that you are waiting for your siblings to believe you, so that you can believe yourself?

“How do you get out of pain, Anita? How do I turn the page, I mean REALLY turn the page, so that all of me looks at my past with empathy and forgiveness?” – the key in this quote is “all of me“. All of you needs to be in this together. As is, not all of you believes you. Part of you is waiting to be believed.

Back to the imagery of a mother taking her little girl to visit grandma: the little girl tells you, I don’t want to see her, her face, her voice reminds me of bad things! And you say to the little girl… what is it that you say to her?

I’ll tell you what I said to the little girl in me when taking her to visit my mother: if you don’t visit mother, you will be a bad girl! She did so much for you, how dare you not see her? How dare you be angry at her, bad girl! It was your fault anyway, you were not born right, you gave her too much trouble, poor mother, how unlucky she was to have you.

When my mother was getting old, I said to the girl: she is getting old, how sad, don’t hurt this poor, old woman by not visiting her! At one point, the little girl said back to me: but I am getting old too, look at my face, I am old too, when do I get mercy? When do I get what I want?

The little girl in me wanted to live free and away from my mother since as early as I can remember. I crossed the world and lived away from her since I was 25, but I kept calling and kept visiting and those contacts drained me. There was never a limited-enough, short-enough visit. I didn’t know at the time, but each visit meant that I disrespected the abused child within me. My mother’s face, her voice, and worse, her touch, all these kept me sick. She didn’t have to be abusive to sicken me: her softness sickened me. It’s like getting sepsis from eating leftover noodles, if you recover, you feel sick looking at noodles, no matter how fresh they may be.

“I know that’s the only way to be free, but dang it, it is really hard” – I finally ended all contact with my mother, last phone call was in March 2013. It took a lot longer to convince the child within me that really, really, we will not visit her again. I promised her. She didn’t believe me. She felt guilty. It was really hard. But finally, free at last. Finally, I believe me, finally, I matter. Finally, I have a new, correct emotional understanding, emotional knowledge acquired in adulthood.

anita

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